Mapping the Hidden Threat: Foreign-Owned Properties Near Critical U.S. Infrastructure

Executive Summary

Adversarial foreign governments - including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea - have quietly expanded their ownership footprint across U.S. residential and strategic properties. While policy focus has centered on farmland, the greater vulnerability lies within residential housing markets - an area largely unmonitored by federal oversight.

Parcl Labs’ analysis brings this hidden layer into focus. By reconstructing true ownership networks across millions of residential parcels, our data reveals coordinated acquisition activity near military bases, R&D hubs, and aerospace facilities. This visibility exposes a growing national security risk that existing government monitoring programs fail to capture.

Fragmented Oversight

Recent reports of Chinese-backed entities acquiring a trailer park bordering a U.S. Air Force base underscores a systemic blind spot. The USDA’s Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA), a program meant to provide oversight excludes residential parcels and mobile home communities, where much of the real activity occurs.

Without a central source for residential real estate ownership, U.S. agencies cannot identify or respond to coordinated acquisition patterns.

The Real Exposure: Residential Housing

The largest foreign-backed real estate exposure exists in residential markets. Parcl Labs’ portfolio ownership mapping identifies dense networks of recurring brokers, shell companies, and intermediaries tied to foreign entities acquiring homes near critical defense and infrastructure assets.

Figure 1. Example ownership network mapped across transactions spanning decades.

Coordinated Property Networks

These portfolio ownership networks are not isolated. Transaction mapping reveals overlapping intermediaries connecting properties across key defense-adjacent areas:

• Eglin Air Force Base (FL) – parcels positioned directly on flight paths

  

• Starbase (TX) – proximity to SpaceX development facilities

  

• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (CA) – adjacent to nuclear research zones

  

  Each cluster exhibits recurring acquisition patterns consistent with coordinated, long-term strategic behavior.

  ---

  Strategic Implications

  Property ownership near defense and technology infrastructure presents measurable operational risks - from passive surveillance opportunities to more sinister attack vectors. For example, we ran a drone threat simulation launched from these locations. Nearly half of US military installations can be attacked within 15 minutes using drones capable of being launched from a back porch.

  These risks are amplified by the structure of U.S. property governance itself. Oversight is fragmented across thousands of county-level record systems, which means no unified visibility into how or where adversarial ownership networks accumulate US property.

  Each mapped property linked to foreign entities contributes to this broader visibility problem - one that only comprehensive, portfolio-level mapping can resolve.

  ---

  Closing the Visibility Gap

  Parcl Labs’ analysis brings this hidden layer into focus. By reconstructing true ownership networks across millions of residential parcels, our data reveals coordinated acquisition activity near military bases, R&D hubs, and aerospace facilities. This visibility exposes a growing national security risk that existing government monitoring programs fail to capture.

  Figure 2. National view of U.S. properties directly or indirectly linked to adversarial governments

  

  Conclusion

  America cannot defend what it cannot see.

  Adversarial governments thrive within the blind spots created by fragmented oversight and incomplete data.

  Parcl Labs is providing the visibility required to close that gap - mapping the ownership networks, identifying the risk clusters, and exposing what no federal agency currently monitors.

  Visibility is defense.